Bitcoin’s White Paper Turns 16: How BTC Went From An Abstract Idea To A Household Name On Wall Street

As you may already know, late October 2008 was an extremely ugly time in the world of finance and money. Most famously, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and the global economy was teetering into recession. Governments and central banks were scrambling to contain the cataclysm.

On Oct. 31, 2008, the Bitcoin white paper came out — now 16 years ago to the day.

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto famously stated in the opening sentence while sharing the groundbreaking Bitcoin white paper with a cryptography mailing list before linking the document entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

The document described the concept of the decentralized P2P cash, which Satoshi called Bitcoin (BTC).

On Thursday, the foremost crypto slid below the $71,000 mark, now trading 4% below the current all-time high of $73,737 it reached in March 2024. Still, Bitcoin’s current value is well above the fraction of a penny where it first started trading — and its ardent believers who invested early are insanely wealthy because of it.

In the early days, mainstream media painted Bitcoin as just a tool for criminals to launder funds, sell drugs, and conduct other nefarious activities. However, that narrative has continued to evolve. Bitcoin is now increasingly being adopted around the world by nation-states such as El Salvador, which adopted BTC as a legal tender in September 2021.

Wall Street titans, including BlackRock (the world’s largest asset manager) and its peers, have since launched easy-to-trade spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States, which have brought in a flood of investment into the apex crypto. 

These ETFs recently smashed the 1 million BTC holdings milestone, further underscoring Bitcoin’s evolution from a niche digital asset to a major financial asset. The Wall Street stockpile has grown by $24 billion worth of inflows since the products went live in January while nibbling away at the heels of Bitcoin’s founding father.

Finding Satoshi

Perhaps the most confounding thing about Bitcoin is its creator. Satoshi Nakamoto vanished completely from the internet in 2011 after releasing Bitcoin’s founding white paper a decade ago on Halloween in 2008.

The conspiracy theories and clues as to who Satoshi really is are endless. For instance, an HBO documentary recently claimed that the elusive crypto creator was early Bitcoin developer Peter Todd, who has since refuted the claims — and many crypto community members have also criticized the film.

Now, a British-Asian macroeconomist named Stephen Mollah, claimed that he is Satoshi at a London event Thursday. One way that Mollah can prove he is indeed Satoshi is by moving the BTC from the Genesis block. However, he said today that he would do that later.

“Genesis block Bitcoin cannot be moved as simply as you think,” Mollah told a BBC journalist in the audience. “It can be moved, but I need to prepare for it. I’ll do it. Very soon.”

The identity of Bitcoin’s creator continues to be one of the greatest mysteries in modern finance. For some Bitcoiners, however, the world is better off not knowing who he, she, or they were or is.